A few weeks ago I read an article on UH-1 Huey helicopters, that said the ex-military machines are registered in the Restricted category. There are limited commercial operations for which they may be used, but being Restricted, they are much cheaper to obtain than their commercially-certified (Normal category) counterparts. AIUI the reason they are in the Restricted category on the civilian registry is that they were not certified in the Normal category. Their certification was worked out between the military and Bell Helicopters, rather than with the FAA.
Today I was thinking about the Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina. A friend of mine was born in Sitka, Alaska. He said when he was little, the family ‘had to take the PBY to get anywhere’. When he told me this, over 30 years ago, I didn’t think about registration. At the end of this documentary on the Catalina, it says ‘Hundreds of ex-service machines were snapped up by civil airlines and small private operators.’ This seems at odds with what I read about the Hueys.
It appears that Catalinas were registered in the Normal category, because they were used to carry passengers. Why and how? Were military aircraft certified under civilian rules before/during WWII? Were they grandfathered in after new rules were made? Not that I’m in the market or anything. Just one of those things I’m currently wondering about.
I don’t have an actual GQ cite-based answer for you. But going from fuzzy memories …
I’m pretty sure the regs changed a bunch between the late '40s and the late '60s. There was quite a rash of ex-WWII era planes crashing in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were hastily built and then run hard for 15 to 25 years after the war and were falling apart. As well the societal expectations for the safety of air travel were going up.
So somewhere along the way former military equipment was reclassified to be Restricted category instead of Normal category. With some limited grandfathering at the time. All this stabilized well before Viet Nam-era surplus became a factor.
Specifically to UH-1s I also recall some controversy in the 1980s or early 1990s about hefty volumes of run-out UH-1 parts somehow ending up on the civilian market as legit Bell 204/205/212/412 parts. They might look the same but as far as the Bell & the FAA are concerned they aren’t the same.
Some of the USAF T-39As that I worked on were sold to civilian companies. However the T-39A was an early version of the civilian North American Sabreliner that was barely modified for military use.
Here’s a cite. Not a particularly authoritative one, but it does a passable job of explaining the post-WWII aircraft surplus market.
As LSLGuy says, the regs changed a lot between the '40s and the '60s, especially with the changeover from the CAA/CAB to the FAA.
Anecdote:
I once worked for Carson Helicopters; at the time they flew Sikorsky S-61s and surplus H-3s, doing heavy lift for construction, logging, and firefighting. Their S-61s were Normal-category, because they had originally been built, operated, and maintained as civilian aircraft. Their H-3s (registered as S-61As) were Restricted-category, since they were originally built, operated, and maintained as military aircraft. Even after being stripped to a bare airframe and completely rebuilt using S-61 components, the former H-3s were Restricted. They made a lot of money logging and firefighting with the H-3s, but they couldn’t do construction work with them.
Good story. The Ship of Theseus - Wikipedia effect applies to everything *except *the manufacturer’s data plate.
My Dad once owned a Stearman that we rebuilt / recovered. Despite it having a supposedly pure pedigree from the previous owner, in the course of that refit we discovered it was actually a former crop duster made from parts of at least three different original airplanes. Plus a different engine and gosh knows how many parts replaced in the ordinary course of operations.
But which airplane was it really? The one on the data plate. Thus spake the FAA. Which we suspect was just a small slice of fuselage tubing grafted onto another fuselage back in the dim mists of time.
I think a lot of it might be that the military potentially runs their aircraft longer and harder than commercial users. For example, the HH-65 Dolphin helicopters that the USCG uses (the red ones with the fenestron tail) are around 30+ years old. And it’s not like they do leisurely runs to oil rigs or around the Hawaiian islands; they’re often used in the worst weather for very demanding operations. Now they don’t skimp a bit on the maintenance or spares*, but still, would you want to buy a 30+ year helicopter that’s been used to rescue people in hurricanes and the like that entire time?
So they classify them as something other than the usual Normal.
(source: used to work in the American Eurocopter IT dept; the USCG was a very good customer of ours)
Anybody remember the scammish Government Surplus ads that used to run in the back of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines? Crazy cheap Jeeps and helicopters. As a little kid I would fantasize about flying a helicopter to school.
It may also depend on the type of aircraft. I’ve flown some vintage fighters that were certified under “Authorized Experimental”. This covered planes like MiG-15s and other warbirds that were built elsewhere - i.e., they came off a factory line (as opposed to being a home-built) but did not have a U.S. civilian type certificate.
A MiG or L-39 is a very different beast than a PBY, or say, a C-130. One could imagine those being given some sort of Normal category status because they’re basically transport planes that happened to be utilized by the military first. But warbird fighters have to be signed off by ATF as well as the FAA. I’d be curious to know what else has been certified under Authorized Experimental. I’m a bit out of date on this, so maybe there are other former military types so designated.
Some aircraft designed for military use are concurrently certified by the civil side, if the manufacturer thinks there might be some commercial market someday and if the military agency paying for it doesn’t have to make any compromises. There are a few C-130’s flying commercially as L-100’s, for instance, and other ex-military planes can get non-Experimental commercial registrations when they’re sold.
Here you go. Straight from the DoD with no scamming. Over 600,000 items available for sale: Public Sales Offerings. Back in the 1970s I was on subscription for their monthly distro of catalogs for upcoming sales. Fascinating and utterly impractical.
I didn’t check for kid-friendly helicopters; you’ll have to do that yourself.
The T-34A and T-34B Mentors are in the Aerobatic and Utility categories, respectively. I’m guessing that Beechcraft certified the Model 45 that way? Interestingly, the (very few) T-34C Turbine Mentors in civilian hands are in the Experimental category, even though Beechcraft tried to sell them as Model 45Cs (IIRC) in the '80s or '90s, and they were certified in a non-restricted category. (I recall the price was $1.34 million, and they didn’t sell a single one.)
Incorrect.
Those L-100s are *not *C-130s. They may look, sound, and smell like a C-130, but they were built from the first rivet as L-100s, with civilian certification & documentation, maintained and operated with FAA-approved maintenance and operational data, and were not used by the US military.
Incidentally, Lockheed Martin has enough customer interest that they have built the first LM-100J, which is extremely similar to the latest C-130J being built & sold to the US and foreign militaries.
Because the US military does not operate or maintain the vast majority of their aircraft in accordance with FAA standards, former US military aircraft (that are not WWII-vintage) generally get either a Restricted or Experimental Certificate of Airworthiness. The vast majority of military aircraft aren’t built to comply with FAA airworthiness certification standards (14CFR Part 23, 25, 27, or 29), therefore they are NOT eligible for a Standard Certificate of Airworthiness without some heavy-duty special dispensation by the FAA.
Relevant cites: FAA AC21-13 (old, and doesn’t have the force of law, but has relevant info) FAA AC20-96 (same caveat as above) FAA Order 8130.2J (latest and greatest guidance)
